For Leonard Cohen, the End Came With a Fall in the Night
By BEN SISARIO NOV. 16, 2016

When Leonard Cohen’s family announced last week that he had died at 82, it gave no cause. Although the poet and songwriter had been open about his failing health in recent months, fans knew little other than what The New Yorker reported in its weekly radio show, that Mr. Cohen had been battling cancer.

On Wednesday, however, Mr. Cohen’s manager, Robert B. Kory, offered more detail about his client’s death.

“Leonard Cohen died during his sleep following a fall in the middle of the night on Nov. 7,” Mr. Kory said in a statement. “The death was sudden, unexpected and peaceful.”

In the months before his death, Mr. Cohen was busy. Even as his body was growing frail and he was experiencing pains in his back, he was working diligently to bring several projects to completion, according to friends and colleagues. In addition to finishing his last album, “You Want It Darker,” which was released in October, he was working on two other musical projects and a book of poetry.

“He felt the window getting narrower,” said Patrick Leonard, a producer and songwriter who had worked closely with Mr. Cohen on his last three albums. “He wanted to use the time as productively as he could to finish the work that he was so good at and so devoted to.”

Mr. Cohen, whose working pace was slow — he took five years to write his most famous song, “Hallelujah” — had been extremely productive in recent years, touring steadily between 2008 and 2013 and releasing three studio albums since 2012. Some of that work, his collaborators say, was a matter of polishing material he had been working on for many years.

Mr. Leonard said that when Mr. Cohen died, they were at work on an album of string arrangements of his songs and another of songs that he said were inspired by old rhythm-and-blues grooves.

Describing their working method, Mr. Leonard, who has collaborated with Madonna, Pink Floyd and many other artists, said that he would sometimes get emails through the night in which Mr. Cohen tweaked lyrics. Then Mr. Cohen joked about it in further emails the next day.

“I feel really grateful that I have been able to have my email ding,” Mr. Leonard said, “and there’s a new Leonard Cohen lyric.”

At times this year, people who wrote to Mr. Cohen — usually a dependable correspondent on email — got an automatic response. Chris Douridas, a host on the California public radio station KCRW, got a terse “Unable to read/reply,” and got a worried feeling.

“It told me that he was unplugging from the digital world,” Mr. Douridas said.

But that message was also Mr. Cohen’s way of keeping distractions at bay while he worked. In the weeks and months before his death, he appears to have engaged in as much creative activity as he could handle. Mr. Leonard said that he emailed Mr. Cohen a set of new R&B tracks the morning he died. Other friends spoke of dining with him just days before.

Last month, Mr. Cohen and his son, Adam, who produced “You Want It Darker,” were interviewed by Mr. Douridas in a promotional event for the album at the Consulate General of Canada Los Angeles. Mr. Cohen had to be helped to his seat and appeared short of breath. But he spoke with his typical mixture of spiritual wisdom and dark, self-effacing wit.

“I’ve often said that if I knew where the good songs came from I’d go there more often,” Mr. Cohen said, in his dry, deep baritone, when asked about his songwriting method.

Mr. Douridas said that after the event, he asked Adam Cohen whether fans could expect another album. “He genuinely seemed to not know the answer to that question,” Mr. Douridas said.

Through a representative, Adam Cohen declined to comment for this article, but in a Facebook post last week announcing his father’s burial, he wrote: “As I write this I’m thinking of my father’s unique blend of self-deprecation and dignity, his approachable elegance, his charisma without audacity, his old-world gentlemanliness and the hand-forged tower of his work.”

Even near death, Mr. Cohen’s debonair charm was intact. Sharon Robinson, a singer and songwriter who has been a longtime collaborator of his, said she was sitting in the front row at the Canadian consulate event, and she gave Mr. Cohen a hug as he stepped down from his seat. “He said into my ear, ‘You look beautiful, darling,’” Ms. Robinson recalled.

She had last seen Mr. Cohen in August, just before she left for a concert tour. He invited her to his house, and after first offering her “chocolate, ice cream and sandwiches,” played her the new album on a boombox.
As the songs played, he closed his eyes and recited the words quietly to himself, she said, a ritual she had witnessed many times before. But this time he was working against the clock.

“He was dealing with the ultimate challenge, I suppose,” Ms. Robinson said, “and wanted to make sure that he got everything out that he wanted to say.”

Thankyou MarieM. Leonard Cohen was part of my life for 40 years. I always thought he might outlive me but now I face the prospect of 20 or so years of life without his music and writing, although he has been prolific enough throughout the decades for me to have a lot of catching up to do. Repeating the condolences to his family I put on Adam's facebook page. And thanks to Canada and the Jews for giving him to the world.

birminghamfan wrote:LEONARD Cohen was in "deep pain" caused by cancer before he died.

The 'Hurricane' hitmaker passed away at the age of 82, and although no exact date and cause of death has been confirmed, it has been claimed that the iconic musician was suffering from the disease and had been physically debilitated by the illness.

David Remnick - who interviewed Cohen in the summer for The New Yorker magazine - said during The New Yorker Radio Hour on Thursday: "When I visited Cohen in Los Angeles he was suffering from cancer although he was keeping that very private. He was in deep pain from compression fractures in his spine and he had to sit in a big blue medical chair to ease that pain.

"He was very thin already. Maybe 105, 110lbs. But I've got to say he was in an ebullient mood for a man who knew where life was taking him and he was headed there in a hurry. And at the same time, he was incredibly gracious. The most gracious host this side of my mother
quoted from southwesternontario.ca , Nov 11th 2016

It would appear likely that Leonard's severe and treatment resistant back pain was caused by spinal secondaries , which may have occurred years after the successful first treatment of a tumour. His death may have have been unexpected in a technical sense i.e. unexpected that week , but I think Leonard had been telling us for a while that he was terminally ill , though naturally enough none of us wanted to listen. It is unknowable to us how long he was disablingly unwell for , I hope that he had a decent life until not too far from the end

I have just read the Los Angeles Times interview with Jennifer Warnes , and I am moved by how Leonard's kindness could touch other people's hearts - a powerful and touching love story.

My deepest condolences to Leonard's family , rest in peace

There seems to be just one source about the cancer story - and that's the NYT journalist David Remnick. Of course there is no reason to doubt it but Leonard didn't want people to know at least while he was alive, so i hope that Remnick's revelation shortly after the death comes with permission.
There are of course many different types of cancer.
Many by now will have heard the podcast - here it ishttp://www.wnyc.org/shows/tnyradiohour
It's good to hear Leonard here , upbeat, an excellent host concerned with looking after his guest, and seeming to be at ease with things towards the end of his life .
It is clear he had a lot more work to give/complete ...had he been given the time.
A sense that he was, if anything, in his most creative period right to the end

Last edited by cohenadmirer on Thu Nov 17, 2016 4:29 pm, edited 4 times in total.

I dislike all this speculation about the cause of Leonards death but the statement from Robert Kory has not helped and will only cause more debate.

Did the fall result in an injury that brought on the death? A sudden unexpected death normally requires a post mortem to establish the cause of death especially if there is a hint of an incident such a fall. Was there an underlying condition that resulted in him dying peacefully in his sleep and the fall not a contributory factor? Was it a combination of an underlying condition and weakness which the fall then precipitated and brought froward what was expected but just not quite as soon? Or did he just pass and it was neither a fall or cancer?

I personally think he was suffering from cancer. He looked very unwell at the album launch and although I Ioved his humour, fortitude and mental dexterity and sharpness my thoughts on seeing this footage were that he seemed very unwell and that it appeared to confirm rumours that he was perhaps close to death.

In all of this the mention of the passing being peaceful is the main solace I take from the information and the knowledge that Leonard was mentally prepared and accepting. RIP

A beacon is on fire. The light keeps on moving, it’s captured there in the blackest grooves of your records. It twinkles like far off stars in the dead winter night. It comes back when the needle hits the vinyl, it crackles and leaps back into the room, and then from the room is ingested again into my blood and my oxygen. I recognise your truth. I’m arrested, held in the spell of your beauty.

"Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack in everything

That’s how the light gets in."

It took you years to write songs, because they were not songs, in the sense you weren’t sitting down to write something disposable, something to be played on a temporary chart. We knew that, we respected you for it all the more. These were holy and sacred verses, they were sculpted through time and truth. You were a poet of the world, you happened to live your mortal life in our times, but your words will echo across time as Aristotle’s do, and Shakespeare’s, or even the writers of the holy scriptures which you loved so much.

Letter from a Leonard cohen lover

In your final release “You Want it Darker” you wrote that you “struggled with some demons, they were middle class and tame.” Thank you for that, for giving us all the power to escape the narrow confines of the ready-made identities we were born into. For those of us who have struggled with tame demons, you have helped to shake them off. To fling off the weak beasts of convention. You were a seeker and you offered us the chance to find meaning for ourselves.

You held out your generous hand and your warmth to me at all the saddest, lowest times of my life. You gave me a ladder to escape the darkest moments, when my soul had become like cold black coffee, when I was a lonely youth in Paris, isolated in Gordonstoun, Scotland, your words were a friend, you’ve inspired me to light my own light, to keep it full of oil. I am so sorry to say goodbye, I never met you, I never even made my way to one of your concerts, when you toured around the world for the last time. I heard that you felt your time was coming close. You died three days after Donald Trump won the presidency of the US. “If you are the dealer, I’m out of the game.” I don’t blame you.

The world is so dark, and more than ever we need poets. But you are still there, in your tower of song, you have offered us a light. I have been playing your new record on Spotify over and over these last weeks, since Brexit, since Trump, since Theresa May, right the way through Calais and Syria. You have been playing over and over. “A million candles burning for the help that never came. You want it darker. I’m ready my Lord.”

“They’re lining up the prisoners

The guards are taking aim,

I struggled with some demons,

They were middle class and lame,

I didn’t know I had permission

To murder and to mame.

Hey Nayni..

I’m ready my Lord”

“If you are the dealer

I’m broken and lame”

Maybe you’d just had enough of the darkness? Seeing it written and not hearing it makes it seem bleak and desolate. But even in this song there is a warmth that hints at optimism. And for us who are left, we must find our way through this darkness, we need optimism now more than ever.

Halleluljah, Halleluljah.

I can only say that you held out your hand and offered love and intimacy, you told us your story. You seemed to understand. You didn’t judge. Goodbye for now and thank you again for all you did and continue to do for us. For all that lives on.

I know it's not exactly a pressing question right now, but: What is a "'Hurricane' hitmaker"?

I assume they confuse Leonard with another Canadian here, Neil Young. So "Hurricane hitmaker" would refer to his big hit, "like a Hurricane". You might put in "Hallelulja" or "Suzanne" instead of "Hurricane" if you like...

Hello
Idon't know if anyone will remember me from back then but I used to practically live here.

When I heard the news I was in deep shock, and II held my the no ears back just to understand life without Leonard. I scooped out a disc and heard hia "anthum" song and finally my the no ears ears came out.

Florian wrote:
I assume they confuse Leonard with another Canadian here, Neil Young. So "Hurricane hitmaker" would refer to his big hit, "like a Hurricane".

Yes, that is possible. Thanks. - Though "hitmaker" is also a strange word to describe Leonard ... The dangers of copy and paste.

Googled this and it took me to an obituary in the Kuwait Times which initially referred to Leonard as the ' Hurricane hitmaker' but later referred to him as the ' Hallelujah hitmaker'.
I can only think in the initial reference they were mixing him up with Dylan , who - of course - wrote a song called Hurricane.
Careless journalism.